How to conceive the dignity of the dead? A dispositional account.

In dealing with human corpses, notions of dignity play a decisive role, especially within legal texts that regulate a corpse's handling. However, it is quite unclear how the claim "Treat human corpses with dignity!" should be understood and justified. Drawing upon examples and problems from forensic medicine, this paper explores three possible lines of interpreting such demands: (a) positions that closely link the dignity of the human corpse to the dignity of the former living persons and (b) accounts that derive the dignity of the dead from consequentialist considerations. We argue that both lines heavily rely on contestable metaphysical claims and therefore propose an alternative account for the dignity of the dead. Our proposal (c) focuses on action-guiding attitudes and the symbolic value of the dead. Such a conception allows for a variety of morally appropriate groundings of individual attitudes. It avoids metaphysically troublesome premises and, at the same time, allows to classify certain actions and manners of acting as clearly inappropriate and blameworthy.

A Defense of the Obligation to Keep Promises to the Dead.

It is widely held that to break a promise that one made to a person who is now dead would be to wrong her. This view undergirds many positions in bioethics, ranging from those that concern who may access a person's medical records after she has died, to questions concerning organ procurement and posthumous procreation. Ashley Dressel has argued that there is no reason to believe that promissory obligations can be owed to people who are dead. Although her arguments are unsuccessful, others establish that neither of the promissory obligation accounts that she considers (the "Authority Account" and the "harm-based view") can justify the standard view that directed posthumous promissory obligation is possible. However, this does not mean that the received view that we should keep our promises to the dead is mistaken. First, the theoretical commitments and argumentative strategies of those who endorse the possibility of posthumous promissory obligations preclude them from grounding such on either of these accounts of directed promissory obligation. They are thus already committed to justifying such obligations in other ways. Second, the obligation to keep promises to the dead could be justified on the grounds that not to do so would adversely affect the living.

The ethical significance of consent to postmortem organ retrieval.

Supporters of opt-in organ procurement policies typically claim that the absence of consent to postmortem transplantable organ retrieval is a normative barrier to such retrieval. On this ground, justification of opt-out policies is demanded. The paper shows that postmortem organ retrieval is normatively different from live organ removal, and so the doctrine of informed consent does not apply to it in the way it does in other types of cases. First, seen as the instrument of protection of autonomy or the right to self-determination, informed consent cannot be relied on in the case of dead persons; secondly, viewed as an instrument of annulment of harm or wrong to the dead (volenti non fit injuria), informed consent relies on indefensible accounts of posthumous harm or wrong. Postmortem organ retrieval in cases of absence of the decedent's consent and refusal is governed by other norms than those related to consent. Such norms include, among others, respectful treatment of human remains (such as those found in regulations of medicine, law enforcement, and research) and avoidance of inherently wrong contexts and purposes (such as killing for the purpose of organ retrieval or trade in the human body or its parts). It is concluded that the onus probandi is on the supporters of opt-in, rather than opt-out, policies of posthumous organ retrieval.

On the moral status of hominins.

This article evaluates the moral status of hominins, and obligations we may have towards them. In exploring these ethical considerations, I consider one of the most recent hominin finds: the 'graveyard' of Homo naledi in the Dinaledi caves at the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. I argue that findings about H. naledi establish a pro tanto duty not to excavate their remains.

The moral standing of the dead.

In choosing to do certain things, we appear to presuppose that we can act in the interests the dead, and that we have a duty to do so. For example, some of us go to great lengths to carry out their final wishes. Given that the dead no longer exist, however, it seems that nothing can be good or bad for them: they lack prudential interests. In that case, it is hard to see how we could owe them anything. They seem to lack moral standing altogether. In this essay, I will rebut this line of thought. I will claim that in some cases things that happen after people die are indeed good or bad for them. Their interests can still be advanced or hindered, so the dead have moral standing.This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals'.